


TEACH ME (baby all night long)

by Mikkeneko



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Darktow arc spoilers, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, I had to look up cryptography to write this so I can relate to Nott right now, Innumeracy, Self-Esteem Issues, Tutoring, some very light flirting on Molly's part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 03:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17717189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: Five times Caleb taught things to the other members of the Mighty Nein, and one time they taught him something in return.





	TEACH ME (baby all night long)

 

**1- Jester**

 

Caleb goes in search of Jester once they are stopped for the night. They're a little more spread out than he's really comfortable with since they weren't able to find a single good clearing in the woods that could fit them all, instead stringing out along a few narrower meadows along a slope. They hadn't planned to spend the night outdoors at all -- they'd already reached the tavern and had been negotiating for rooms for the night before the realization came out that Jester had spent the last of their money at trinket stalls on their way through the market. _All_   their money.

There's some exasperated grumbling about that coming from the direction of the main camp, and Caleb can sympathize with that -- but he also wants to make certain that Jester is okay. There had been some harsh words flying around on the way out of town and while Caleb is not pleased with the night's developments, he knows that in the grand scheme of things this is only a minor setback.

They've all made mistakes. Some of them much, much worse than this.

Jester is sitting off by herself with her back to the road when Caleb approaches, huddled into a ball and sniffling. Caleb sighs and sits down next to her.

"Oh, Caleb," she says, then stops and blows her nose. "Are you gonna yell at me, too?"

"Nein, I think that has been covered," he says quietly. In truth, given his and Jester's past conversations about money, he had expected her to be cheerfully unrepentant or at least confused over what the issue had been.

"I'm sorry!" A fresh burst of tears comes with the exclamation. "I don't mean to cause trouble. There are just so many wonderful things and it seems like we have so much money until suddenly there isn't any!"

For all that she is a woman grown, Caleb reflects, there are some times when Jester's inexperience with the world really shines through. He knows that she's never been without money a day in her life, very much doubts she's ever been in a position of having to ration it.

"Maybe Beau's right," Jester says miserably. "Maybe I just shouldn't be allowed to have any money at all."

Caleb had just been thinking along similar lines, but now he hesitates. It doesn't seem quite fair that she should be singled out in that way -- much of the money was Jester's to begin with after all, a gift from her mother. Even that which they earned from jobs on the road is still part Jester's by right; she does as much as any of them to earn it. More than that he finds that he doesn't want to deprive her of the little things that bring her so much joy. Pastries and silk flowers and glass beads are cheap enough, after all.

But most of all, he admits that it isn't fair to keep treating her like a child, without even trying to show her how to be an adult.

"I don't think we need to go that far," he says.

Jester sniffs. "I'm just no good with money."

"No one is born being good with money," Caleb counters. "It is a skill that you can learn."

She tilts her head at him, expression a bit confused. "What do you mean, a skill?" she says.

"How to keep a budget," Caleb says. He pulls out his stash of paper and carefully tears free a blank page, flipping it over onto the front of his book and balancing it on his knee between them. He draws long, straight lines down the page, dividing it into columns. "Let me show you. You need to start by making an account of all the funds you have --"

Jester scoots forward, looking down at the page. "Is that why you're always counting your money?" she asks.

"Part of it, yes," Caleb says. Mostly it's because he finds it soothing, but that's not relevant to this lesson. "Once you know how much you have to start then decide how much you need to spend on necessities, how much you want to put aside for emergencies, and how much is left."

He writes each category at the top of the column and begins filling in items: _food, rooms, horse feed._ In the next column, _healing potions, bribe money, cart repairs._ "Then when you are shopping you can prioritize which items are necessities, which are small enough frivolities that you can buy them without worrying, and which you should consider leaving for another day..."

By the time the last of the sunlight vanishes and the cold creeps in, driving them back to the fire, Jester's tears are fully dried.

 

* * *

 

 

**2 - Fjord**

 

In town there's more opportunity to spread out and relax, less need to band together for safety. Molly and the girls are out shopping, an offer that Fjord was happy to pass on: Caleb too preferred to stay in the inn and copy spells rather than spend another day getting thrown out of places for the state of his clothes.

Fjord comes by not long after the others leave and pulls up a chair at his table, a comfortable presence. He has the manners to wait until Caleb pauses in his work, a fresh page drying in the warm air, and looks up at him. "Yes, Fjord?" he says.

"I've been thinkin'," Fjord starts. "Been re-evaluating. Y'see the original plan when I set out on this trip was to find a way to get into the Soltryce Academy, get some formal training there."

Caleb can't help the wince. Fjord, of course, can't miss it. He chuckles ruefully. "Yeah, I'm beginning to think that wasn't such a good plan," he agrees. The smile fades as he leans forward, expression intent. "But then again maybe I don't need to go to the Academy. Maybe I've got the teacher I need right here."

Caleb sorts through a few pages slowly before he answers, sorting through his thoughts at the same time. "I do not know if I would be a good teacher for you, Fjord," he says at last. True for many reasons, but Fjord doesn't need to know what most of them are. "Your abilities are quite different than mine. I mostly specialize in transmutation, whereas most of your magic is conjuration, or perhaps… perhaps abjuration, as with your armor." And evocation -- _of course --_ but that's a place he'd rather not go. He goes there often enough in his dreams, after all.

"See, right there!" Fjord exclaims, waving a hand as though to capture Caleb's words out of the air. "I've heard you talk about these things before. Abjuration, transmutation, conjuration. I can take a guess at what they mean, but I don't _know._ " His jaw sets stubbornly, the smallest edge of his tusks peeking out over his lip. "And I want to know."

"Why?" Caleb has to ask. "You seem to be quite a proficient caster as you are. You don't seem to need much instruction."

"I don't... know," Fjord says slowly, then shakes his head in frustration. "I know some things that I don't know how I know. I know I can do them, and if I just... will them to be, then they are. But I don't know _why_ and I _want to know_. I feel like I'm fighting blind, swinging a weapon I don't rightly understand. I feel like I'm treading water well enough but I could go under at any time. It's not a good feeling."

Caleb meets Fjord's eyes for a moment and finds a surprising kinship there: the look of a man who was once so sure of his understanding of the world and his place in it. The look of a man whose world has been turned in on itself and left him adrift, floundering and lost in a sea of confusion.

"All right," Caleb says at last.

Fjord's eyes brighten. "You'll teach me?" he says eagerly.

"I don't know how much good my instruction will do you," Caleb cautions him. "But if you want to learn, Fjord, I'll try."

He sets his finished page of spellwork aside and turns to a new, clean page. He draws a circle in the center and begins to sketch rings about it -- perfectly concentric, his old tutor would be proud.

"Oh, now?" Fjord seems startled, but then he leans into it. "I'm game."

Caleb turns the page so he can see it and begins to label the rings. "Before we talk about schools of magic it may help to talk about the structure of the planes, since different forms of magic come from different sources," he says. "To start with we are on the Material Plane. That is surrounded by the ethereal plane, which you may recognize as the primary plane that you interact with when casting a dimensional transmigration spell such as Blink. Beyond that is the Astral Plane, the Elemental Planes of Chaos, the Shadowfell..."

By the time the others get back from shopping Caleb has not gotten much copying done, but it's been a productive afternoon all the same.

 

* * *

 

 

**3 - Nott**

 

Like Fjord, Nott is interested in learning magic. Unlike Fjord, Nott focuses more on the practice than the theory.

She's got talent, Caleb realized that months ago. The memory of the day she mastered Message is one he will treasure for a long time, bringing it out to look at sometimes and think to himself that maybe, just maybe, he can do good things sometimes.

Now he has her trying on Prestidigitation, a basic cantrip that students at that Academy used to practice as homework. It is so basic a spell that he cannot recall a time when he did not know it, and yet this one she cannot seem to master.

That is -- she _can_ cast it. She speaks the incantation, makes the gesture, and a brief dazzling flare of yellow light flashes and drips from her hand like melting honey, then goes out. Without question, she can cast it.

But she cannot seem to make the spell behave as she wishes. That one visual effect is _all_   she can manage. Unlike Message which has a very clear and concrete effect, Prestidigitation is supposed to effect any number of changes -- lights, music, breezes, illusions, heat, cold, flavor. Yet none of these come to Nott's hand at her cast.

"I don't get it," she says after the fifth cast sputters out, exactly the same as the first four. "How do you make the spell do different things?"

"It can be specified to some extent by a change in the incantation," Caleb says. He closes his eyes and casts his mind back to his old school days. His memory is phenomenal but this is _before,_ before the fire, before the breaking, and everything past that is flattened and blurred like he is viewing it underwater. What was it his old tutor had said? "But more important than that is your visualization. You have to hold in your mind the image of what you intend to happen, and impose that vision on the world around you to make it your reality."

Nott looks doubtful. "Sure, I get it, I can visualize colors and sparks and things," she says. "But how'm I suppose to _visualize_   a sound or a smell? Those aren't visual."

"It just means to call it to mind," Caleb tries to explain. "It does not need to… to literally be an image."

"Huh," Nott says, her voice thick with skepticism, but she goes back to practice.

She tries several more times, each time failing and Caleb can see in her face and her body language how quickly she becomes discouraged. Her shoulders slump, her ears droop and she tucks her head down on her thin neck. "I don't think I can do this Caleb," she sighs at last, and Caleb can't say he's surprised. "I don't think I'm smart enough."

"Of course you are smart enough," Caleb says firmly. "You are quick to learn, and you don't make the same mistake twice. You are very intuitive, you make connections easily. You mastered Message in no time, and you're more deft with Mage Hand than I ever was. Why would you think you aren't smart?"

"I don't know..." Nott says uncertainly.

Caleb studies her sideways, taking in the downcast yellow eyes and the sloping ears. "Is it because you are a goblin?" he says quietly. "You think goblins cannot be smart?"

"I don't know about that..." she temporizes with a shrug. "I don't know about all goblins. I just mean me. I'm not… not smart. Not like you."

She looks miserably uncomfortable and Caleb would call the whole magic lesson off, except he knows that will only cement her feeling of failure. "You are smart in many ways that I am not," he says instead. "Especially when it comes to people and what they are thinking, what they are feeling, I have often been guided by you."

"Sure, but that's not… real smarts." She waves one clawed hand in the air vaguely. "You can do things with your mind that none of the rest of us can do. You remember things, and you always know the time, and which way is north and, and a bunch of stuff."

Caleb snorts. "A compass knows north. A clock knows the time," he says harshly. "Neither of these things are especially _smart."_

The conversation stalls for a moment, Caleb agitated, Nott mutinous. This is a sore subject for both of them, he knows. Nott constantly struggles with her own feelings of inferiority and as for Caleb, well.

He knows Nott wishes the best for him and encourages him whenever he falters, but for him it is not that simple. Because he knows she is right. He knows he is smart, and he also knows that for years he took his brilliant mind as a license to run roughshod over everyone else in the world who was not as smart as him. Not as gifted as him. Not as _superior_   as him.

He followed the belief in his own greatness once and it left him stuck in a cleft of burned cinders and jagged glass. If he could smear his own mind and memories with dirt to cloud it he would, except that he must stay clear if he is to accomplish his goal.

But this is not about him, not today. He wrenches his attention away from his old self-obsessive hurts, and refocuses on the lesson, on Nott. She needs him now, he tells himself. She needs him.

"Smart is not something that you just are," Caleb says at last. "It is something you can develop with hard work and Nott, I know you can work hard. Let's try practicing visualization techniques a little more before you attempt another spell. With practice, it will become easier."

Nott sighs, and Caleb has not forgotten how much of a surprising toll constant spellcasting and concentration can take on you. Still she is willing to try again, willing to be guided by him, and for that he is grateful. "If you think so, Caleb," she says. "I trust you."

Before the evening is up she has changed her spell's color twice and created a sound like the worst airhorn found in the Empire, and he has never been more proud.

 

* * *

 

 

**4 - Mollymauk**

 

It is actually a mistake that tips him off. Not his, not even one of Molly's exactly; it is Fjord's mistake when counting out the share from their latest job.

"And that's sixty-five gold each," Fjord concludes, tipping one of the little piles into a sack and holding it up for Mollymauk's inspection. "Y'want your share now, Mollymauk?"

"Sixty-five sounds like a good amount," Molly says cheerfully, accepting the little bag and tossing it from hand to hand theatrically. "I'll try not to spend it all in one place."

Caleb looks up from his work, blinking rapidly as the words and figures tumble in around him. "Why is it sixty-five?" he asks Fjord, doing the calculations in his own head quickly. "It should be seventy-five, four hundred and fifty gold divided into six parts."

Both of them frown over at him. "What do you mean?" Molly says, a moment before Fjord curses and a green flush rises to his cheeks.

"My mistake, Caleb, I'm mighty sorry," he said. "I was still countin' as though Yasha was with us, dividing seven ways instead of six. You're right of course, it should be seventy-five."

"Why did you agree to sixty-five?" Caleb asks, switching his attention to Molly.

Molly's eyes are wide, his expression shocked, before he covers it with an easy laugh. "Well, I didn't want to make a big deal of it," he said, and for a moment Caleb feels a near-blinding surge of indignation. He didn't want to make a big _deal_   of it, of Fjord shorting him, when he'd taken _Caleb_   to task so thoroughly over the same --!

But then he looks a little closer, pushing past his own irritated reaction, and he sees the flush in Molly's cheeks, the slight twist of his lips, the lashing of his tail. He's embarrassed, Caleb realizes with a sudden epiphany, embarrassed and distressed that he would have accepted the short deal. Why? Because he made the same mistake when counting up that Fjord did?

Because he didn't do his own counting at all?

At this point Caleb's caution catches up with the rest of him, and he says nothing more in front of Fjord.

 ---

Once he gets Molly alone when they are stopped for a rest he brings the topic up again, low enough that his voice does not carry across the entire campsite. "Mollymauk, I don't mean to pry," he starts off cautiously.

"But you will anyway, won't you?" Molly says. He seems to already have a good idea where the conversation is going, and be resigned to it.

Caleb hesitates, then sits down next to the tiefling. "You are not learned in numbers, are you?" he says.

"Oh, did I forget to tell you all about my degree-by-mail in theoretical mathematics?" He thinks Molly rolls his eyes, although with him it's always a little hard to tell. "No Caleb, I'm not. Where would I have learned?"

"I would have thought your family at the carnival might teach you," Caleb says. He tries not to make assumptions about any of his companions, since he's already been wrong so many times. "Surely there must be a fair amount of book-keeping, that sort of thing."

"Yeah, but that was Gustav's job, nobody was going to be entrusting the amnesiac with it!" Molly swipes a hand through his hair, agitated. "Look, I know I'm an idiot compared to the rest of you, but I can count and I can make change and for most of my life that's been all I needed. It's served me well, okay?"

"You are not an idiot," Caleb counters. He thinks of how Molly always overpays, how frequently he tells vendors to just keep the change, and wonders now if because the act of counting out the right change is too stressful for him, as difficult as reading. "You have just never had the opportunity to learn more advanced numbers. I'm sure you could, if you had the chance."

"Well, unless we plan to stop for a month to enroll me in a local school, I don't think I'm going to get that chance," Molly says bitterly. "It's not a big deal, is it? I get along, and that's what matters. Anything more would just bore me stupid."

He leans back with his hands behind his head, ankles crossed, the very picture of insouciance. But Caleb can't help but catch sight of his tail, lashing in harsh movements like Frumpkin when he is ruffled or upset. This upsets Molly, this not-knowing, for all he tries to play off that he doesn't mind.

"We don't need a school," he says. "I could teach you."

Molly sits up straight, eyes widening. "You would?" he says. Then a smile begins to grow over his face. "Private lessons with  _Doktor Widogast,_   oooh."

Now it's Caleb's turn to roll his eyes, and Molly laughs at the response his needling has won. "Yes, yes, come to my office hours later," he says. "I will teach you what you need to know so that no one will be able to cheat you or take advantage, ever again.

\---

Molly is very disappointed, later that evening, to find Caleb focused intently on the lesson and not responding to any of his flirts. But he learns, all the same.

 

* * *

 

 

**5 - Beau**

 

In the wake of the _Ball Eater,_ churning away from Darktow, they finally have a chance to breathe. It's been a stressful week for all of them, Fjord most of all but also Nott, and the rest of them not far behind. Caleb is taking some time just to rest in the cabin, wishing again that he had the materials to return Frumpkin to his cat form, when Beau wanders in and throws herself down on the bed.

"You realize that Fjord and Avantika fucked on that," Caleb says without putting down his book. There is a reason he's sitting on the chest and not the bed.

"Ew," Beau says, but doesn't get up, so she can't be too terribly disgusted by it. Her blue eyes bore into him until he can nearly feel their heat on his skin; she has come to talk to him about something and, knowing Beau, will not leave until she's said it. He would search his soul for sins, but it would be a very quick search.

"I just wanna say," Beau says in her abrupt way. "You did good, back on Darktow. With, you know, the book. That was really good."

He flushes a bit at the praise, then scolds himself for it. "It turned out to be a waste of time," he mutters, turning a page even though he wasn't finished reading it yet. "The Plank King accepted your testimony, and Avantika damned herself."

"No, but it was pretty badass," Beau counters. "And what if he hadn't bought it? It might have come down to the book after all."

There doesn't seem to be much to say to that, so he doesn’t. He senses there's more she has to say so he waits, finger on the next page to turn it.

Sure enough, after a minute's silence she speaks again. "What if we run into another sneaky person like her? What if there's another code that needs deciphering?"

Caleb blinks. "I can certainly try my hand at that one as well," he says.

"Yeah well what if I don't wanna rely on you all the time?" Beau shoots back.

For one frozen moment Caleb cannot breathe. The certainty that she is rejecting him, that she means to push him from the group once he is no longer useful, _indispensible --_   no. That is not Beau's way. She's just being overly aggressive in her speech, as always.

As if on cue, Beau's mouth twists in a grimace. "That came out wrong," she mutters. "I meant..."

She flops on her back on the bed with a sigh and spends a minute staring up at the ceiling. "Who knows where I'll be five years from now?" she says at last, and Caleb has no idea what that has to do with anything. "Maybe I don't wanna stick with the Cobalt Soul, but there are some things they do that I believe in. I believe in _truth._

"I want to be able to find the truth wherever I go, no matter how many codes and ciphers they hide it behind." She rolls up on one arm, smacking one fist against the mattress in frustration. "But I can't just punch a book or a piece of paper. I wanna know what they say. I want... I want to know the truth."

Caleb parses this. Beau wants to learn the secrets of encryption, it seems. Not because she wishes to replace him or dispose of him, but because she… admires him?

"Okay," he says at last, when he finishes rolling that idea around in his head.

Her eyes widen. "Really?" she says, excitement charging her voice.

"I don't see why not," he says.

She hops up and comes over to him, sitting on the chest beside him in a way that threatens to crowd him off it. "Go for it," she says, and he does.

"The first thing to learn is that there are not truly all that many different ciphers," Caleb says, pulling out a sheet of paper and beginning to scratch out a simple example code. "Many people who have no education in cryptography will try to come up with their own code, but those almost always fall into a set number of simple ciphers: mirror-writing, letter substitution, numerical substitution. In each case the key is in pattern recognition, in finding the most common words and identifying the most likely substitution, then testing your theory against the text to see if you can find meaningful words from it…"

In the cabin hold of the _Ball Eater_   with Darktow and Avantika dropping behind them with every mile, with his family safe above him and his friend seated beside him, Caleb can breathe again.

 

* * *

 

 

**(+1 - Caleb)**

 

It's only been a day since they put ashore in this little port town, on their way back to Nicodranas, but already the fever has ripped through Caleb and gone. It lasted less than twenty-four hours from start to finish -- too short a time for any clerical magic to be able to help -- and then it was gone, but it took all of Caleb's strength with him.

He tosses restlessly in the bed of the inn, twisting the sheets around him. _You've felt worse_ , he reminds himself, not that he wants to send his thoughts down those paths. He's felt worse, he's been weaker, but that does not change the fact that he can barely stand up straight without his knees buckling, without the world dipping and swaying around him like they're still on a boat.

He should be resting. The others made that clear with varying degrees of sternness or concern, according to their temperament. He needs to rest so that he will be strong enough to travel when they have to go. The others are out right now gathering supplies against that day, and he had begged them to look out for the supplies he needs as well.

Too many favors. He does not like to ask for so many things when he should be able to take care of it himself --

"We're back!" Jester's familiar voice cheers through the room as the door slams open and the rest of the Mighty Nein bounce into his sick room. He manages to scoot up against the wall, a pillow at his back, so he can at least face them sitting up and not lying down like an invalid. Fjord and Beau follow Jester and Nott squirms around ahead of them; the taller members of their party must still be downstairs.

Nott crosses to his side and straightens the blankets fussily, lays her clawed hands over the skin at his wrists, his forehead. "Hmm, you don't seem feverish," she muses. "Good! I was terribly afraid you'd relapse when we were gone."

"We were gone for like, _two hours_   Nott," Beau says irritably.

"I am fine," he assures her, giving her his best smile of the day. "How was shopping? Did you manage to find --"

"Oh! We brought you all _sorts_   of things," Jester says, nearly dancing with delight as she opens her bag and begins tossing packages onto the foot of his bed. "Paper like you wanted, and ink, and _incense_   for _Frumpkin,_   and Nott found a book that she thought you'd like and I found a book that I _know_   you'll _love,_   and on the way back there was a baker who sold _bread --"_

She only means well, and it is not her fault that Caleb watches the gifts pile up on top of his feet with a terrible sinking feeling. It is too much, too many favors, and the thought of all he'll have to do to pay it back is just too crushing a weight on top of his weakness. "I… Jester, you should not have," he said feebly. He must not panic, and above all he must not burst into tears. "I will, I will owe you -- I will owe all of you -- I'll find a way to pay you back -- "

Jester pats his foot through the blanket. "Don't be silly, Caleb!" she scolds him. "We wanted to get it for you!"

Fjord seconds this with a nod. "We all benefit if you have what you need to do your thing," he says, tapping a twine-wrapped sheaf of paper and giving him a meaningful look. "And you've used a lot of your own supplies to help teach us things, don't think we haven't noticed."

He's not wrong, but those were supplies he made the choice to use, lessons he made the choice to give. "Ja, but that is not equal to -- "

"Well, I for one am not keeping score," Fjord says, "and I don't think the rest of us are either."

"Caleb if there's anything you need, we'll get it for you," Nott reassures him. And he knows she will, he _knows --_   she has given him _so much_   over the past few months and he can never hope to -- "You don't need to pay us back."

"And we like it when you're happy, too!" Jester adds with a beaming smile. "You're not happy enough! So if there's something we can do to make you smile, we'll do that too!"

Beau steps around and stands squarely in his field of vision, legs planted and arms crossed, immovable. "And you don't need to ask us, and you don't need to pay us back, and we're not keeping a fucking tally," she says, as though she knows exactly what's running through his head. "We're your friends. And this is what friends do. Understand?"

The word hangs in the air, lingering, for a long moment before Caleb realizes she didn't mean that last question to be rhetorical. "I understand," he says at last. Feeling weak, too weak to argue or stand against them, weak enough to let himself receive their support without pushing them away.

He lies back against the pillows feeling exhausted and wrung out, and he flips through the book Nott thought he would like (a book on communication spells) and the book Jester knew he would love (a book about a racy affair between a princess and a lady knight) and he thinks that perhaps, just perhaps, there is something they have to teach him too.

 

* * *

 

 

~end.


End file.
